Tattoo
by Writer Unblocked
Summary: On the night that they first make love, Booth learns things about Brennan that nobody else knows. One-Shot.


_Okay people, you are officially being warned: this fic is rated M purely for strong, violent, potentially disturbing themes and NOT for wonderful smutty lovemaking. If such is not your cup of tea, I just got the most brilliant idea for a lovely fluffy fic, so please come back when that one is finished. _

_Anyway, this fic is pretty different from my others. It's my first shot at real angstiness, and I'm not sure how well I did. B&B are just beginning of an established relationship here, and I tried to keep Brennan in character but there may be a few slips (I'm afraid she may seem overly in love with Booth on some occasions, but I couldn't think of any other way to make the story flow). Also, I wrote this in Brennan's voice as if she is retelling the story of what happened from some point in the future. I'm not sure how you guys will like that._

_Basically this story is an experiment for me. It could go very well or it could be a disaster. Please let me know what you think about it. I'd really appreciate it._

_As for Curing Insomnia, my plan with that one was originally to get it out quickly and be done with it, but then I got this epic sickness which lead to an allergic reaction to antibiotics and other unpleasant things, and somehow my inspiration with that one sort of left before I could get it down. I haven't completely given up on it, but it'll probably take awhile for me to finish it. Sorryyy, I really do hate to leave you guys hanging, especially since so many of you have reviewed/alerted that one =( But in the meantime, you can have this (Does that make up for it? Forgive me?)_

_One last thing: I thought about getting a beta for this but I didn't feel like just randomly PMing someone and asking. I probably won't want a beta for all of my fics but if you would like to be my beta during my future moments of insecurity, please feel free to get at me =) _

_Disclaimer: Not mine._

B**************************************B****************************************B

I knew the very first moment that he laid eyes on them. I knew that he could see them. I knew even though it was dark in the room and I couldn't tell what direction he was looking in. I knew even though he didn't say anything right away. I knew even though he didn't explicitly pay them any attention at all. He completely ignored their existence; his tongue continued its' mission of trailing a long, wet, make-me-tremble-to-have-him-so-close path up my inner thigh to my dripping, aching, throbbing-just-for-him vulva, but still, I knew that he knew that they were there.

Because he paused.

Barely. Briefly. He was back in action within nanoseconds of the discovery, but it was a pause nevertheless, and I felt it because I knew him better than anyone else in this world did—better than Parker, than Rebecca, than Cam—and it was because I knew him that I felt that short hesitation, and it was because I felt that hesitation that I knew that he could see them.

It was obviously our very first time making love. In the weeks leading up to that moment I think that we had both seen the shift in our relationship coming. Three tough cases, everything from handicapped foster children to abused altar boys, all in a row. We were both physically and emotionally drained, and for some inexplicable reason—he would probably call it _love_—we sought solace in each other more so than ever before. I think that both of us could feel our bond growing stronger and more intense than it had ever been. My little nighttime sexual fantasies about him were intensifying as well—as were his sexual fantasies about me, but at that time I had no way of knowing that such fantasies even existed. There came a point when we were spending every moment we could in each others' company, when he came and stayed at my apartment well past two in the morning even though we weren't working or eating Thai, when I went to his apartment and fell asleep there—I fell asleep stretched out on his sofa, my chest pressed against his, my face snuggled in his neck, his arms encircling my waist. And when I woke up in the morning, it was to the feel of his soft lips moving against mine. Hesitantly at first, and he almost pulled away when I started to wake, but I caught his face and held him to me and kissed him with everything I felt for him. And I made him kiss me back. After that, sex and the following established boyfriend/girlfriend relationship had no longer been a question of _if_, but _when_.

And _when_ it did happen, _when_ we first made love, that was when Booth first laid eyes on them. And, like every other lover I'd had since my sophomore year in college, the first thing he noticed was my butterfly.

"Bones!" he'd exclaimed in a gentle but surprised tone, tugging my pants over my ankles and tossing them to the side, his eyes fixed on my butterfly from the moment it had come into view.

"Huh?" he had already transformed me into such a hazy, trembling, mindless puddle of breathless desire that I had temporarily forgotten that I even _had_ a butterfly or anything lying underneath it. All I could think about was _him_, Seeley Booth. Seeley Booth hands touching me all over, Seeley Booth velvety-soft tongue caressing my own, Seeley Booth scent washing over me, Seeley Booth warm brown eyes gazing into mine and making me feel that _connection_ that I could only ever have with him, and most especially, Seeley Booth penis sliding in and out, in and out of me in my first ever _crazyhotpassionateexplosivemakemetearoutmyhairandlosemymind _round of lovemaking. Lovemaking was a thing only Seeley Booth could bring to me. Before him, I had never believed in the existence of such a thing. Sex was sex, and sometimes there was good sex. But after Seeley Booth, what I used to think was excellent sex paled in comparison to his lovemaking; Agent Sullivan and Professor Stires had nothing on him.

"You have a tattoo?" he asked, even though he was staring the answer dead in the face: my butterfly, permanently etched so far up my inner right thigh that at the time of its creation there had only been my cotton boyshorts between the tattoo artist and my most secret area. Her wings were wide, so detailed and intricate that they had taken Lena, my artist, nearly two hours to complete. No color though; she was all black with various degrees of shading. And beneath her were three symbols. Kanji, just like the tattoo on Booth's wrist.

Our eyes met after he asked that question. His were darker than they had been before, they looked even more hungry and even more aroused for me, if that was even possible. Apparently, surprise tattoos were a turn-on for him. And I knew that he hadn't yet seen the things that lay beneath my butterfly at that point, so I flashed him a seductive smile in hopes that he would keep moving and never see them. At least not until after he showed me what it was like to break the laws of physics.

"Yes," I breathed; I was aroused beyond belief, still panting, still flushed, still hot and sweaty, and my sex was still throbbing painfully despite the fact that Booth had yet to get anywhere near it with anything besides his fingers, and that had been through my panties. No man had made my body react so strongly before, and all I wanted was for him to put more focus on my kitty and less focus on my butterfly.

"I would've never pegged you for a tattoo sort of girl."

_That's because I wouldn't be a tattoo sort of girl, if it weren't for the things my butterfly is hiding. I have only ever told one person about these things and how they got there, and that person didn't listen. I love you, Booth. I know that now. And you mean everything to me. You're the only person who has ever really cared, who has ever really tried to get past my so-called cold exterior that I can't help but put up. You know more about me than any other person ever has and in some aspects you even know me better than I know myself. And I love you for it, Booth. I really do. But still, this is something that even you don't know about._

_And I don't want to tell you. _

He reached out with his index finger and gently traced the edges of my butterfly's wings, eliciting a shudder of arousal from me as my kitty meowed just a little bit louder.

"When did you get this?" he asked, scooting forward and lowering his head so that it was within centimeters of my butterfly. So close that, when he talked, I felt his breath fan across my thigh.

"College," I gasped as he darted his tongue out and smoothed it over where his finger had just been, tracing my wings, so close to my center that my temperature shot up another couple hundred degrees and my hips unwillingly jerked forward, trying to get his tongue to move upwards an inch or so to my dripping wet clitoris. Instead, his tongue ran a slow, smoldering path along the edges of my wings, only stopping long enough for him to say:

"College, huh? What happened, did Angela drag you to some wild party and drown you with a few too many shots of Everclear?" he chuckled to himself; apparently this was funny. But it was not funny, actually, the real reason why I had—_soberly, rationally_—decided to get a tattoo, and so I didn't laugh. Which didn't bother him. "That's alright, Bones. I think it's hot."

And that's when he paused, right after that. That's when he hesitated. And that's when I knew that he had seen them, had laid eyes for the very first time on what he hadn't known existed because I had never told him or anybody else about them. I believe he noticed because his tongue ran over one first, and the feeling of puckered flesh had made him stop to take a closer look. Lena had done an excellent job—they were hard to see even in daylight—but, despite that and the fact that it was now dark, deep inside I had known that Booth would still see them. I had been hoping that he wouldn't, but I knew that he would because he was Booth and, while my other lovers might either have been too eager to get to my kitty to notice what was underneath my butterfly or might have noticed but simply not cared enough to ask how they got there, Booth was _Booth_. Booth loved me—he said so. He cared about me more than any man ever had and ever would. Booth was unlike any other man who had ever had the privilege of seeing what was in between my thighs, and I had always known that he would see my butterfly and that he would see what she was hiding and that he would ask.

But I had hoped that he wouldn't. Because I was pretty sure that I didn't want to hear that questions that he was going to ask and I definitely knew that I didn't want to answer them.

Especially not now, not _now_, not during our very first time. Booth was _Booth_. He was different. He meant more to me than anyone else ever had and ever would. I loved him, a confession that meant a lot coming from me. Before Booth I hadn't even believed in love. It had taken him four years to break me down and get me to realize that what I felt for him was more than biological—more than euphoria caused by the release of endorphins—but that it was emotional as well. In my entire life I had never felt about anyone the way I felt about Booth. I knew that I loved him. And I knew that I wanted this, our first time making love and breaking the laws of physics and doing all of the things that he promised me would happen when two people met and there was that spark, I wanted this to be special. Not interrupted by my butterfly and what she was hiding. I didn't ever want to talk about what my butterfly was hiding, but least of all right now.

"Booth _please_—" I whispered when I knew for certain that he had seen them and I knew for certain that he was about to ask about them. I wasn't expecting my plea to actually work, but it did. Somehow Booth figured it out, somehow he heard the words that I wasn't saying: _Booth please don't ask me now. Please don't. You'll ruin this for us and I love you too much to want this ruined. Anyone else and I wouldn't care, but you, Booth? You? I love you. I never loved anyone else._

And he didn't ask me, not then. Our moment was not interrupted, not ruined by my butterfly and the things she was so good at hiding from other people but could never, _never_ hide from Booth. Instead, he continued to run his tongue along my wings, then placed one soft kiss on my thigh before moving to set his mouth over the place where I needed him the most.

And we made love. With his mouth on me like that, licking and stroking me until I was shaking, shuddering, moaning uncontrollably, my butterfly and her secrets weren't in either of our heads for very long. She didn't ruin anything. My first time with Booth, with the only man I could ever love, was everything it should have been and so much more. It was perfect. Just like we both wanted.

B**************************************B****************************************B

Our first time making love, and Seeley Booth showed me that the spark that we had and the connection that we shared was more than I had ever thought it could possibly be. He made me feel things that I had never felt with another man before, and I've had my fair share of sexual conquests. I may be a famous author on the New York Times bestseller list, but I could never put into words my first lovemaking experience with Seeley Booth. I can only say that it was more than I thought it could be, and that it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

We made love more than once that first night. Four times, to be exact. I couldn't believe how insatiable he made me; never before had I been able to become aroused again so soon after having an orgasm, and never before had I been able to have more than one orgasm during a single session. And these orgasms, they were all backbending, mindblowing, earthrocking…things that I didn't even believe were physically possible, that's what my orgasms were. I suppose it makes sense, after four years of partnership and suppressed sexual attraction, that it would take us a few hours to get our fill of each other, that we would go after one another like ravenous wild animals until we were both satisfied.

Finally I started drifting off to sleep—what would have been a real sleep this time, not a sleep that would have been interrupted by Booth and his roaming, never-get-enough hands and lips. I was sprawled across Booth's chest, sweat sealing us together, not enough energy left in me to lift my pinky finger. Booth brushed hair away from my face, kissed my forehead softly, and started to move me.

"Umph," I believe that was what I said in protest against him moving me. Struck with the sudden, painful thought that he was going to leave me, I became more awake as he placed me on my side. For the first time in my life, I wanted someone—a man—to stay in my bed with me. I wanted to sleep in his arms, to curl up next to him, to wake up with him placing butterfly kisses up the column of my neck, or down my spine. Booth…he wasn't going to leave, was he? After all of that, after breaking the laws of physics time and time again, he wouldn't just go home and let me sleep here alone? He said he loved me. He said he wanted a relationship with me. And I was willing to try that—maybe not so far into the whole marriage and babies idea, but a relationship? With Booth? After four years he had managed to convince me that it wouldn't be quite as bad as I had originally thought. I was willing to try, and he was just going to leave? No. He couldn't.

I was just starting to get the feeling that I was more of a booty call than a girlfriend—and for the first time in my life that feeling bothered me, making my stomach twist into unbearable knots—when he somehow figured out exactly what I was thinking. I don't know how Booth does that, but he does. I suppose he just knows me that well.

"Go back to sleep, Temperance. I'm just going to the bathroom," he whispered in my ear, pausing for a moment to place a delicate kiss on my temple and run his fingers through my hair.

He left the bed, and there was no way I was going back to sleep then. I watched his absolutely beautiful gluteus maximus disappear into the bathroom before I rolled onto my back and lay there, waiting for him to come back.

"Why didn't you go back to sleep?" he asked me a few minutes later, as he approached the bed and realized that I was still awake and watching him.

"The bed is cold without you," I murmured honestly, thinking that I could never sleep without the warmth of his body enveloping me ever again. He smiled, and I smiled back, and he climbed back into bed, his naked form settling next to mine. His arms went around me, and I burrowed into his chest, wondering when in the world I had become such a snuggler. Oh, right; Booth had changed me into a million and one things that I never was before him, snuggler included.

"I love you, Bones," he said, placing another soft kiss on the top of my head. I smiled into his chest. I'll admit that I was terrified the first time he had admitted to that sentiment out loud. People who loved me never stuck around for very long. But Booth…he made me believe that he'd loved me from the moment he'd first laid eyes on me, and he hadn't left me yet. Four years, that was what he had said to convince me of what we had, _four years and I've always been here for you, and you've always been here for me. I haven't left you yet and you haven't left me yet. What makes you think we're suddenly going to leave each other now? _

There was more to that argument, of course. I wasn't swayed that easily. But now, curled up in the warmth emanating from his amazing body, I was just glad that he knew how to argue effectively.

"I love you too, Booth," I whispered.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

"Goodnight," I kissed his chest softly. He tightened his arms around me and we stopped talking.

But I wasn't falling asleep.

I was exhausted and I was definitely, _definitely_ sore, but deliciously so. My muscles felt soft and warm, and I didn't—maybe even couldn't—move an inch as I lay there, listening to the deep, easy sound of my partner's breathing. It was a nice, strong, assuring sound; I liked it. I also liked the way his chest moved up and down, slowly, steadily, against my face. I lay there, focusing on his breathing, and thought about everything that had changed between us. Maybe Sweets was right; maybe Booth and I really had been in a surrogate relationship all this time, and maybe now we were just making it an official thing—because I surely hadn't had a sexual relationship with anyone else for nearly a year before my first time with Booth, and he confided in me that he hadn't had a relationship with anyone since Cam. Whatever the reason, I was deliriously happy with our new relationship.

My new relationship. With Special Agent Seeley Booth. The only man who I had complete faith in, who I trusted with my life—and my heart. It was never my intention to let him get this close to me, but now he was here and the only thing I could do was deal with it. I loved the man. I loved every single thing about him, including all those things he'd done in the past that he wasn't so proud of—things that it had taken him a long time to tell me because they were still so painful to talk about, or because he thought that they would make me think less of him. But really, I thought no less of Seeley Booth the gambling addict and Seeley Booth the military sniper than I did of Seeley Booth the FBI Agent, Seeley Booth my best friend, Seeley Booth my partner. And I appreciated that he told _me_ about his past; he told _me _about that eight-year-old boy whose father he had killed, he told _me_ about his guilt over the death of Teddy Parker. In recent weeks, since it became clear that we were headed towards a major change in our relationship, he had told _me_ more about some of the things he'd seen as a Prisoner of War, he had told _me_ more about what it was like to be the child of an alcoholic wifebeater, he had told _me_ more about what it was like to be a gambling addict, to have nothing. Some of the things he told me were still so painful for him that I'd seen the man I adored reduced to tears as he tried to tell me; these were the things that I knew I was the only person he would ever tell. Similarly, there were some things that I had told him that hurt me to think about, things that I had never and would never tell another soul in the world.

But there was still one thing I hadn't told him. My deepest, darkest secret. The story behind the things that my butterfly could conceal from any other man on the planet but him. He knew they were there, but he hadn't asked me a single question about them. Not who put them there, or where they came from, or _tellmeTemperancewhatthefuckhappenedtoyouandtellmenow_. I knew he wanted to ask; I could see it in his eyes the second he first saw them. He was dying to know. But he could see that I didn't want our moment ruined. And so he didn't ask.

I used to think that I could never tell anyone, but I changed my mind right then and there as I lay thinking about Booth and all of the things he told me and all the things he didn't let himself ask. I could tell Booth. I could tell him, and he wouldn't laugh. Or taunt me. Or brush me aside like I was nothing. Or ignore me. No, if I told Booth, he would do what nobody else had done the last time I spilled this secret; he would listen. He would believe me.

My realization that I could tell Booth was sudden. Even more sudden was the fact that I _wanted _to.

"Booth!" I whispered, somehow managing to move my exhausted limbs. I pulled my face from the sanctuary of his chest and looked up at him, trying to see if he was asleep already. He was.

"Booth…Booth!" on the third call, as I disentangled my legs from his so I could scoot myself farther up the bed, his eyes opened.

"Bones…whatsamatter?" he asked sleepily. I pushed myself upwards until my head was on the pillow next to his, facing him, our faces centimeters apart. We were eye-to-eye.

"I need to tell you something," I whispered as he reached for my waist, his eyes drifting shut once more.

"Mmm…tell me in the morning."

"No," he was still half-asleep; he couldn't see how serious I was being, "It's important, Booth. I need to tell you now."

He opened his sleepy eyes once more and looked directly into mine. I don't know what he saw there, but whatever it was finally got through to him.

"You alright, sweetheart?" he asked, suddenly wide-awake, his voice laced with concern and that alpha-male assertiveness that I used to hate but now regarded almost affectionately. I watched his brown eyes scan my blue ones for any sign of what was the matter with me.

"I'm fine…I just…I just…There's something I want to tell you," I whispered, moving so close to him that our lips nearly brushed against each other when I spoke. I slipped one hand up and rested my palm on his warm cheek, stroking his stubble absent-mindedly with my thumb, "It's about my butterfly."

His eyes darkened instantly, and I knew that he already knew what had happened to me. Booth was no idiot. Marks like that so high up on the inner thigh of a thirty-something year old woman? There weren't many scenarios that could place them there, and none of them were good. Yes, Booth already knew what had happened to me, but he still didn't know the details. He didn't know the circumstances, he didn't know the things that made me just a little bit different from the thousands of others like me.

And that was what I wanted to tell him. Already I could feel the familiar dull ache that flooded my chest and constricted my breathing whenever I spoke or thought too hard about it. It was going to be difficult to say, sure. It was going to be painful, definitely. Maybe I would cry. Maybe my lungs would get so tight and the lump in my throat would get so big that I would feel like I wasn't breathing—maybe I was going to have one of those panic attacks that used to plague me regularly. But still, I wanted to tell him.

"What about it?" he asked carefully.

"Well, I know that you saw my…my scars," the hands on my waist tightened drastically at that last word, "And I thought that you would ask about them, but since you didn't—"

"Bones—Temperance," he interrupted softly, calling me by my given name so I would know that he was taking me seriously despite the fact that he wasn't letting me speak. One of his hands remained fixed tightly around my waist while the other moved up to lay across my cheek and rub my skin the way I was doing his, "Before you go any further I want to tell you that I….I know that sometimes I push and poke and make you tell me things that you maybe wouldn't be quite ready to tell me otherwise, and I know that I shouldn't do that. I know that I should wait until you're ready. So this time…I did see those scars, baby, but this time I didn't ask because, when you tell me, I want you to _want_ to tell me. Please don't tell me this because you think I want to know. I mean, I _do_ want to know, but I don't to force this out of you. I know that you trust me and I'm pretty sure that with time, whatever this is, you'll feel comfortable enough tell me."

I smiled then--not my normal radiant smile, but a smile nonetheless--, watching him struggle to find the adequate words to convey exactly what he meant. I gently ran my thumb across the delicate skin just below his left eye before I leaned forward a millimeter and gently pressed my lips against his.

"I _do_ feel comfortable enough, Booth," I murmured when the kiss ended, "I don't feel forced into anything. I _want_ to tell you."

He looked at me warily.

"I'm sure, Booth. I've never been more sure of anything," I added. He nodded.

"Just as long as you're willing," he whispered, thumb still stroking my cheek.

"I'm willing," I whispered back, "But only if you promise to listen."

"Of course, baby. I promise."

I knew that I didn't have to make him promise, that the fact that he would be more attentive and not miss a single detail of the thing I wanted to tell him was a given. Booth always listened to me, even if the words coming out of my mouth were about something as simple as what I had done at the lab that day. But still…after the last time, I had to make sure. Because coming up with the courage to speak about it was painful, but speaking to someone who wasn't listening was infinitely worse. I couldn't open myself up to a person who would just write a note in a file and brush me off. Not again.

But Booth wouldn't. Booth had never in his life brushed off a single thing I had to say. And he never would. I trusted him.

So I told him. Right there, in my bed, on the very night that we'd first made love, with my face so close to his that my breath fanned across his lips when I spoke. I whispered it to him. Every single detail.

I was only sixteen years old when they sent me to that foster home. And a young sixteen too; sixteen years and seventeen days, to be exact. I had just celebrated my so-called sweet sixteen, my very first birthday without my biological family, but I had already been in two other foster homes. The first foster family, they gave me back because their other children didn't get along with me—I was gawky, I was nerdy, and they were the 'cool kids.' They teased me. Their son, he was the captain of the football team, he told everyone in school about me. He told them all that I was a foster child and that my parents had abandoned me because I was so weird. He encouraged everyone else to tease me as well. And my weirdness was precisely the reason why my second foster family didn't want me; I was too shy, I was too awkward. After my first set of foster siblings had put me on display for the entire school like some sort of freak show, I wouldn't speak a word to any of my new foster siblings all day. I wouldn't even speak to my foster parents if I didn't have to. Someone decided I should see a psychologist; he said that I was suppressing my feelings, that I was becoming emotionally distant, that if I kept it up then sooner or later I would be headed for a mental breakdown.

So my third foster family, I got sent to them because they apparently had previous experience in dealing with 'disturbed' children. They were a husband and wife, both in their forties, Ernie and Jacqueline Engle. They had two biological children who were grown and lived in different places, but they'd been taking in a steady stream of foster children for years. Sometimes they housed more than one foster child at a time, but since I was 'difficult,' it was decided that for the duration of my stay with them I would be the only foster child in their care.

I knew that they didn't like me though. I was still too timid and I still never spoke and I was still 'emotionally distant,' and I once overheard Jacqueline telling a neighbor that she suspected me of being mentally challenged. I suppose I was taken care of—I never starved, and there was always a roof over my head—but they only did the bare minimum. I woke up and was teased at school every day, then came home to a place where I was largely ignored. The two of them, they just sat around all evening with their faces stuck to the television. I shut myself up in my room and studied; I hardly ever came out.

I was sixteen years and seventeen days old on the day I arrived at that house, and I was sixteen years and thirty-eight days old the first time that Jacqueline went to visit her mother for the weekend. She left me behind. With Ernie. Alone.

Later on, Ernie would put the blame on me. He would say that I was a young, horny, _promiscuous_—it was _that_ word that would remain in my foster file forever—teenaged girl who was teased by boys her own age and so decided to seduce someone older instead. He would insist that I had purposely waited until Jacqueline left the house so that she wouldn't catch me. He would say that I got in his lap, that I was all over him, but that he did the right thing by pushing me away and rejecting my misguided affections. He would say that I accused him of rape only because I was lonely and upset by his rejection. It was all my fault, he would say. To listen to him, he never did a bad thing in his life.

But he did do a bad thing, and none of it was my fault. How in the world could anyone believe for a minute that it was _my_ fault? That I could go from being 'too shy' and 'too timid' in one moment to 'too promiscuous' in the next? I was just sitting in my room that Friday night when Jacqueline was gone, reading as usual. I was minding my own business, in no way being _promiscuous_. It was nearly midnight when Ernie came into my room—I had just changed into my pajamas and he saw me come out of the bathroom, then followed me. And the first thing he did was hit me. Slapped me right across the face so hard that the bruise was there for weeks—dark enough and nasty enough that some teacher or administrator or _someone_ should have asked me how I got it, but no one ever did. Then he pushed me, forced me down onto my own bed where my very own favorite teddy bear was laying—the one that my father had given me for my fifteenth birthday to remind me that I might be growing up, but I would always be his baby girl—and he beat me. Not hard enough to break anything or warrant a trip to the emergency room, but hard enough to leave marks and bruises that _someone_ should have noticed in school the following Monday. Ernie Engle weighed nearly two hundred pounds and, skinny little girl that I was, I barely weighed half of that. He just kept hitting me and hitting me and cursing at me until I thought that maybe it was his intention to kill me, but then he suddenly stopped. He stopped and he sat back on the bed and he stared at me for a couple of moments, and I should have run then but I was too afraid and in too much pain to move. Then he jumped on me and squeezed his hands around my neck and shook me until I couldn't breathe, all the time warning me that _if I ever, ever told anyone about what he was doing then he would be sure that I wouldn't live to be seventeen, he would be sure that I would die and my death would be just as painful as what was going on right now_.

And even though by that point I was terrified and I was crying and he had put me in more physical pain than I had ever experienced before, I still didn't expect what came next.

He pulled my sweatpants down and ripped my pajama top right off my body and raped me. And there went my virginity. Right out the fucking window. Ernie Engle raped me and stole my virginity. I swear I'm not making this up.

Afterwards he lit a cigar. He sat on my bed and lit a cigar and, while I was lying there truly believing that I was going to die, he smoked and sat quietly. Then he seized my right leg, forced it open, and pressed the lit cigar against my inner thigh—he did it as carefully as he could so as to not snuff the cigar right away so that it could leave a bigger, rounder, fuller burn mark behind. After that he left.

Three times it happened, on three separate Friday nights. Each time was exactly the same, each time began with another beating and ended with another burn mark, another scar forming on my inner right thigh—"_Those are permanent, Temperance. Those will never go away. Now you will never forget who I am or what I did or how many times I did it to you."_

Three beatings, three rapes, three burn marks. I'll never forget it. Then I got sick of sitting around like a helpless little rag doll while some man took advantage of me. One night I put all of my favorite belongings back into my black trash bag and ran away.

Being a socially awkward nerd with nobody in the world to call on, the only place I could think of to go to was to school. And I lived there. At school. I stuffed all of my possessions into one tiny locker, slept on the couch in the assistant principle's office, and got my breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria. Dinner I tried to steal, or otherwise trolled the corridors looking for dropped change until I had enough to buy a bag of chips from the vending machine. And I got away with living at the school for an entire week before the Engles finally reported me a runaway and social services quickly figured out that I hadn't missed a day of classes. They came and got me out of physics one day and forced me back into the Engles' home, despite the fact that they literally had to carry me over the threshold. I should have told them then, but I didn't. I was too afraid of the threats Ernie had made to speak a word against him.

I was in that house for less than forty-eight hours when Ernie tried it again. Jacqueline was at work this time, but before Ernie had even finished my customary beating she had come home and caught him mid-act. And he stopped then, when she was there—not that she cared or even asked him to stop. She had quite obviously known from the beginning what Ernie was doing to me. Where the fuck else did she think that I would be getting those bruises from? Luckily, her presence kept him from raping me that time, so the count stayed at three. Three circular burns on my inner right thigh.

After that I broke down and told my social worker. It was painful and embarrassing to talk about—it still is—and I was ashamed—I still am in a way, although I know for sure now that I have no reason to be—but I had to tell someone so they could get me out of that man's house. So one day I sat in my social worker's office and bawled my eyes out and told her everything—every last detail, just like I told Booth—that Ernie Engle had done to me. I told her how he beat me. I showed her my bruises. I told her how he raped me. I pulled down my pants and showed her the three patches of burned skin on my inner thigh. I told her that I had been a virgin, that he hadn't even used a condom, that I could have been carrying his child for all I knew—thank God, _thankmotherfuckingGod, _that I wasn't. I sobbed through the whole thing, and when I was finished she just handed me a box of tissues and sat there scribbling words in my foster file.

Then they brought Ernie in. He denied it all. Like I said before, he told the social worker that I was _promiscuous_, that I had tried to start something on multiple occasions, that I was angry and a liar. I told my social worker that Jacqueline had seen it. Jacqueline lied too. And my social worker, she didn't do anything but write a couple of half-sentences in my foster file—_Appears to be harboring a lot of anger. Falsely accuses foster father of molestation. Is promiscuous, has begun seeking sexual attention from older males. _She documented my bruises and the burns on my thigh, but never sought any explanation for them.

I was relocated to yet another foster home and Ernie and his wife went back to their pretty little suburban house and took in more foster children. The police were not called. A report was not filed. My word did not count. My social worker refused to listen to me. She just stared at me while I cried and called me a liar in my foster file.

B****************************************B***************************************B

I knew that I was going to cry when I told Booth. I had been prepared for my own tears, as well as the feelings of suffocation and internal panic that always came along with thoughts of Ernie Engle. I had been prepared to let Booth see me cry—it was something he had witnessed on a few occasions in the past, although this time was very different. This time I _really_ cried. There were times when I was crying almost as hard as I had been the last time I told someone what had happened to me, in my social worker's office over fifteen years ago. There were times when I was sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe, much less form sentences coherent enough for Booth or any other human being to comprehend. But I had known that would happen. Before I had begun telling Booth my story, I had expected that I would start crying.

What I hadn't expected was that Booth would cry.

"Booth," I choked back my own tears. I had forced myself to stop crying and wipe my eyes so that I could see him clearly, but the realization that he was crying large, fat tears that rolled silently over his face and the soaked pillow beneath his head opened my floodgates all over again. Somewhere along the way our hands had become entwined, but now I let his go so that I could clumsily wipe away his tears with my fingers, "Stop crying, Booth…Don't cry…_Please_ don't…"

"I'm sorry," he said, sniffling and gazing at me through red-rimmed eyes, "I'm sorry, Bones. I'm sorry he did that to you. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm sorry that nobody listened to you. I'm _sorry_, sweetheart, okay? I wish I could—"

He stopped when I laid a silencing finger across his lips. We were still close—so close that my finger was also touching my own lips.

"Shhh, Booth," once more I made a valiant effort to leash my tears, but still they kept leaking out the corners of my eyes. It was just…Booth crying? Not because of his own personal demons and monsters, but because of _mine_? It did something to me, it fucked me over on the inside to see that. And this wasn't something that I could think about in scientific or anthropological terms, something that I could compartmentalize, something that I could distance myself from. I wished he would stop apologizing, "It's not your fault. You have nothing to apologize for."

"They should have…I wish I could have…"

"It's okay, Booth. You can't change the past, but you're here now. That's what matters to me," I murmured, removing my finger from his lips and settling my hand against his cheek once more, "Stop crying. Stop crying, Booth. _Please_."

He sniffled again and nodded. I wiped the last of his tears away with my thumb and tried to stop my own. I still couldn't. He leaned forward and gently kissed both of my cheeks, lapping up my tears with a flick his tongue, but they continued to roll. For a few moments we sat in silence, staring at each other. Although my vision was blurred, I could see that his eyes were dark and full of something hard, like iron, and that he appeared to be thinking deeply as he took in my stream of tears and the details of the true story that had brought them on.

"Ernie Engle, that what you said his name was?" he asked after a moment, his voice just as dark and iron-laced as the look in his eyes. I knew that voice, that look. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he wanted. Booth was protective, possessive, and I knew that somewhere over the past four years I had become _his_—it had happened no matter how much I may have disliked that thought in the beginning, although now, now that I knew that he had become _mine_ as well, it didn't seem like such a bad thing anymore. Booth took care of what was _his_, he guarded it with his life. And when someone hurt what was _his_ or took it away from him, Booth sought revenge. Even if it had happened fifteen years ago. Even if it had happened over ten years before he walked into my life, before I became _his_.

"You won't find him," I said, sniffling and wiping my eyes one more time. This time they stayed almost dry, although the occasional tear was still set free when I blinked.

"What do you mean, I won't find him?" Booth was suddenly simmering with white-hot fury, so strong that I could feel it radiating off of his body in waves even though it wasn't directed at me and, other than the iron in his eyes and in his voice, he displayed no physical indicators of anger.

"I mean, you'll find him, but…" I hesitated, not sure of a good way to say what I was about to say without enraging Booth further. His iron-eyes were glittering dangerously and I could see how badly he wanted revenge. I knew that, given the chance, Booth would hunt Ernie Engle down and beat him until he was nearly dead. Booth would torture Engle and violate him the same way that Engle had done to me when I was just a little girl and didn't have nearly the amount of self-confidence, self-defense, or compartmentalization skills that I had today. I knew that Booth would make sure that Engle was permanently damaged, that Engle would never forget who Booth was or what Booth did to him or how many times Booth had done it. It was possible that Booth would go as far as to kill Engle.

And surprisingly, although I had envisioned myself doing the same thing on more than one occasion—now that I was surely strong enough to inflict more pain and more humiliation on Ernie Engle than he had ever inflicted on me—I did not want Booth to do it any more than I wanted to do it myself. Years ago I had discovered how to leave everything behind me, and I preferred to keep on moving forward than to turn back now. It would be nice to finally have justice, but not if that justice cost me all of the progress I had made in the last decade-and-a-half.

"Where is he, Temperance?" Booth demanded, his voice dangerously low and fused with rage that still wasn't and never would be directed at me. I hesitated.

"The Ohio Correctional Institution at Ashland," I finally whispered.

"OCI Ashland," Booth repeated in disbelief, "He's in _prison_?"

I nodded as a few more tears escaped.

"For _what_?"

"He, um…I told you that nobody listened to my accusations against him," I said quietly, "I told you that nothing happened to him, that he didn't get so much as a blip in his clean record as a foster parent and so he…they let him take in more foster children. Girls. And, while I was working on my dissertation for my second doctorate, four of his foster daughters accused him of rape. They came out together, all four of them, and they went to the police. And after that, seven more girls came forward separately to say he'd raped them as well. And now he's…he's about five years through a twenty-five to life sentence."

I couldn't look Booth in the eye when I said that. I looked down, at his chin, my fingers playing absent-mindedly with the stubble growing there. I wasn't sure what made that part so hard to say. Maybe it was the knowledge that there had been other girls after me. Maybe it was guilt over being too afraid to go to the police myself, because if I had gone then maybe Ernie wouldn't have gotten the chance to do to those other girls what he had done to me—I traveled to Ohio specifically for part of his trial and, although nobody had known who I was or why I was there, I had sat quietly in the back of that courtroom, I had seen those other girls, and I had listened to some of them testify against Ernie. Maybe I could have prevented that, if I had been a little bit stronger.

"So he was convicted of raping them…" Booth said slowly, his fingers coming up take my own—the ones that were still stroking his chin. He held them tight and I finally raised my eyes to meet his. Once again, I could see the gears in his brain turning, "_Them,_" he emphasized after a moment, "But what about _you_, Temperance? Did you—"

"No," I interrupted quietly, "No. I didn't go forward, and there was no record of my previous accusations against Engle. My social worker didn't say anything, Jacqueline was dead but she wouldn't have said anything anyway, and they were the only people I ever told."

"And…Why didn't you go forward?"

"Because…Because I couldn't. I had already told someone once and she didn't…she didn't believe me, Booth," I had a hard time explaining, "I couldn't risk that again, Booth. I _couldn't_. If no one believed me the first time, when I still had the bruises as evidence, why would someone believe me the second time? And anyway...the statute of limitations on child rape is ten years. It had already been over eleven."

Maybe that was what bothered me the most, the knowledge that those girls had gotten justice while I was ignored. Maybe it was the knowledge that someone had listened to those girls, someone had believed their story. Nobody just sat there and stared at them while they cried and labeled them _promiscuous_ and called them a liar in their foster files. Maybe it was because Ernie Engle was in prison for what he had done to _them_, not for what he had done to _me_. He would never receive punishment for what he had done to _me_. Maybe it was because the foster girls who came forward had each other to draw strength from, while I was alone. Like always. Maybe if I had had a foster sister who had gone though the same thing as me, we would have found the courage to come forward together.

"Bullshit," Booth said harshly, his iron eyes turning to steel as he started to move against me in agitation. I tore my hand from his and placed it on his chest, hoping that the gesture would somehow calm him. It didn't. He was furious, "I don't have a statute of limitations, Bones, I'll get him for you. MCI Ashford, you said? I'll get in there. I'll have him killed. For you, Temperance, for you…"

"No!" I exclaimed, "No, don't Booth. I don't want…I could have done it myself if I wanted to, but I just want to move on. That's all I want."

"I wouldn't regret it, though," Booth continued, "I'd kill him and I wouldn't ever regret doing it. Not this one—"

"Booth!" I interrupted, my stomach twisting to knots as I saw just how angry he really was, "Booth, I want you to promise me that you won't. Promise me that you will leave it alone."

He stopped and looked at me for a long moment. A fresh wave of tears overcame me and I tried but failed to hold them back.

"Please, Booth. Promise me. _Please_."

He nodded then, his fingers reaching up to dry my face, which was once again pointless because I was still crying—if that was even possible. I felt like I had cried more in those thirty minutes than I had in the whole sixteen years that it had been since the last time I had told someone about what Ernie Engle had done to me.

"You're sure, Temperance?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Fine, then. I promise."

"Thank you, Booth," I managed a weak smile through my tears. He smiled in response, but it was strained, forced, like he was doing it just to please me. Which he was.

I closed the millimeter between our lips and kissed him gently, knowing and not caring that he could probably taste the saltiness of my tears. He exhaled hard when I pulled away, and for a moment we just lay there in silence, my hand still on his chest and his hand resting in the crook of my neck. I felt him breathing, his chest rising and falling steadily against my hand, and I burrowed my torso just a little closer to his in search of his warmth. I sighed and closed my eyes when he laced his fingers through my hair. I don't know how long it was before he spoke again, but I knew that, even though it was late and we were both exhausted, I wasn't even close to falling asleep. And neither was he.

"So…So the butterfly," he finally said, fingers caressing my scalp tenderly, "Tell me about it."

I complied, my butterfly being slightly easier to talk about since she symbolized my strength, my ability to let go and move on.

My sophomore year in college, that was when I got her. I had finally found someone—a boy in one of my science classes—who was smart, who didn't think I was a complete freak show like everyone else, and after nearly a year of his companionship—I wouldn't necessarily call him a _friend_, since I never spoke to him about personal or emotional matters the way I do to Angela or Booth—I decided I wanted to have a sexual relationship with him, even though he was nowhere near what one would call attractive. Having begun my martial arts and self-defense training in my freshman year, I was in the process of trying to free myself from the hold Ernie Engle had placed on my life when I was sixteen. For three years I was afraid. I suffered from anxiety and panic attacks—some that had been bad enough to send me to the emergency room, not breathing. I couldn't look any man or boy in the face without fear, and every night in my bed I relived the horror that Engle had put me through. And, as if that wasn't enough, I would get random flashbacks during the day as well. I would pass by someone smoking a cigarette, see an informational poster about sexual abuse in the common room of my dormitory, bump into a man who fit the approximate height and build of Ernie Engle, and it would set off my internal panic bubble. Then there were the times I would get set off for no good reason, in the middle of class or just sitting on the bus.

And I was sick of it. In the middle of my freshman year I resolved to get myself over it. A normal sexual relationship with someone—preferably someone who didn't think that I was an absolute freak—was a part of that resolve. So I tried it.

The moment he saw the three circular burn marks on my inner thigh—which wasn't, thankfully, until _after_ we'd had intercourse and I had determined that it was not nearly as scary as I had thought that it would be, and that it could in fact be quite pleasurable if done correctly—he started asking questions that I never wanted to hear, much less answer. He was a bit stupider than Booth and couldn't so quickly piece together the basics of what I'd been through, but nevertheless his questions bothered me. I suppose he was asking them out of genuine concern; he really did seem as though he cared to hear the answer, probably because he didn't expect it to be something so gruesome. I left soon after he began questioning me without saying a word on the subject, and I guess he learned from that experience, because the next time we had sex he didn't say a thing about my scars.

That was when I began to actively look for ways to get rid of my scars—I had been thinking about doing it previously because I hated having to look at them every time I had to go to the bathroom, but when I realized that I was going to be asked to explain them every time I had sex with a new person, I became absolutely determined to get rid of them. I knew that no cream advertised on television was going to be effective enough to heal burns as deep as mine, but laser removal was expensive and I was not yet a wealthy forensic anthropologist or a New York Times bestselling author. I had resigned myself to drowning the area with cocoa butter abundant in Vitamin E when one day, purely by accident, I stumbled across a tattoo parlor that advertised a specialty in covering up scars.

I went in immediately. I met Lena and showed her the scars that I was looking to cover up, and she assured me that she could make them look nearly invisible for only two hundred dollars. I didn't know what I wanted to cover them up with and refused her suggestion to go home and think about it—I wanted it done right then and there—so she helped me choose. She told me that if there were any virtues, qualities, or themes that had a special meaning to me then she could create a tattoo that symbolized them all. So I said that I liked freedom, I liked the idea of being untouchable, I liked healing, I liked moving on, I liked my identity. What I didn't tell her was that I wanted to be _free_ from the restraints Ernie had placed on me, I wanted to be _untouchable_ so that in the futurenobody could hurt me like he had again, I wanted to finally be fully _healed_, I wanted to _move on_ from that part of my life, and I wanted to never forget who really I was or where I really came from.

Lena made a number of suggestions, but I finally decided to go with the butterfly. A butterfly is beautiful. A butterfly is free to flutter wherever she pleases, and she never stays in one place for very long. She is always going, always moving. She never stops long enough to let other people catch her. And she is delicate; you have to be gentle with a butterfly, or else you could squish her or tear her wings. Not that I'm delicate; I could kick the ass of any man three times my size, but for some reason the theme of delicacy also appealed to me. A butterfly covered nearly everything I wanted to symbolize, not to mention that it was feminine enough to not draw suspicion from any of my lovers, who would simply think that it was meant to be cute. It was my own idea to put kanji beneath my butterfly to cover the few things that a butterfly would miss.

"Healing," I told Booth, "That's what the first kanji symbol means. The other two are a variation of my name: Temperance. I don't want to let what Ernie did to me become all that I am. I am more than just a…just another victim, you know? I don't want to remember _what _I am every time I go to the bathroom, I want to remember _who_ I am. I want to be Dr. Temperance Brennan, not just another nameless, faceless, _voiceless _victim…I can't be that, Booth. I mean…" and here a couple of tears leaked out again, "I know that I am and I always will be a victim. I know that, among other things, this has really…really fucked me up socially. You know what I'm talking about, Booth. You of all people know that I'm socially awkward, I don't need to explain that to you. But it's just that I can't let a terrified victim be all that I am, Booth. I _can't_. I have to be my own person, so after I got my butterfly I figured out what I wanted to do and what I wanted my purpose to be, and I went after it. I am _more_ than just another abused foster child. I am _more_ than that, Booth. Do you get it?"

"I know who you are, Bones," Booth murmured then, repeating the same exact words he had said to me that time I had a freak moment of self-doubt at Vince McVicar's pig farm, "Of course I get it."

"Good," I shifted downwards and buried my face in the curve of his soft, smooth neck. I closed my eyes and inhaled, allowing his natural musky scent—a scent that always made me feel calm and safe, no matter what—to wash over me. He kept his hand in my hair, gently twisting it, and the other hand he placed protectively on my back.

"After you got the tattoo, none the guys you slept with noticed the burns anymore?" Booth asked after a moment.

"I suppose some may have noticed, especially a few of my long-term lovers, but none bothered to ask. And I wasn't exactly volunteering to tell any of them," I answered, my lips seeking and finding the sweet spot at the hollow of his neck and placing a tender kiss there, "I have only ever wanted to tell you."

"Not even…Not Sully?" Booth asked, swallowing hard before he mentioned the name. I knew that the thought of my relationship with the other FBI Agent still bothered him, "Sully claimed to know you pretty well. I mean…he fucking asked you to sail around the Caribbean with him for an entire year, but he didn't ask you why there are three burn marks on your inner thigh?"

"Sully was nice, but Sully never knew me half as well as you do," was my response, "I don't think he ever looked at my tattoo long enough to see the burns. He wasn't like you, Booth. I do believe that he cared for me but…I wasn't enough to make him happy."

"You make me happy," Booth's arms around me tightened, "You make me _very_ happy. I love you, Bones."

"I love you too," I placed another kiss on his throat and we were both silent. I had told him everything, everything there was ever to know about my butterfly and the secrets that lie beneath her. Nobody else knew as much about me as Booth did. Not a soul in the world.

And what he said next, after about twenty minutes of the two of us laying together without words, it proved to me that I had made the right decision in telling him.

"I wish I could beat the shit out of those people for not listening to you, Bones," my breathing had evened out and my tears had stopped completely by this point, and I think that he thought that I had fallen asleep. Whatever the reason, he spoke those words so softly that I had to strain my ears to hear them, "I wish I could take back every single thing they ever did to you. I'm sorry that I can't. But I can promise to be here for you from now on. I can promise to make sure that you have a voice. I can hear you now. And it doesn't matter if anyone else ever does, Temperance. _I_ can hear you. _I_ am listening."

That was what he said. And he was whispering too quietly for me to catch it all, but I did hear that last part, and suddenly I was filled with a warm sense of relief. I realized then that a part of me had been empty and aching to be heard for years. And, Booth, he had listened to me. After sixteen whole years of keeping it to myself, he, Seeley Booth, became the first person ever to listen to my whole story and to believe me. This was why I trusted him. This was why I loved him. I had known that he would believe me without question. He really, truly heard me. He didn't doubt a word I said. He didn't stare at me with cold eyes, he didn't scribble sentences about me in a foster file, he didn't take the word of an older man over my own. He didn't label me with words—_promiscuous, liar_—that did not accurately describe me. He listened to my story, and he believed it. It was like a burden had suddenly been lifted off my shoulders, and the hole that had opened up inside me after Ernie Engle raped me and my social worker refused to believe me was filled with a sense of peace.

Peace. Brought on by seventeen simple words spoken by the man I trusted and valued over all others, by the assurance that I no longer had to be alone with my butterfly and the things she was meant to cover. Someone else knew, and someone else cared.

_And it doesn't matter if anyone else ever does, Temperance. _

I_ can hear you_.

I_ am listening._

B**************************************B****************************************B

_Again, this is my first attempt at true angst and I'm kind of insecure about it…Please take the time to let me know what you think—what you liked, what you hated, things you think I need to improve on, etc. Your opinion will be epically cherished and appreciated._


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